


You Get Used to It

by What_we_are



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-08 20:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8861776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/What_we_are/pseuds/What_we_are
Summary: For the prompt, "Jesse and Mike became very close, once Mike takes the kid from the hospital, Jesse missed him a lot, he's unhappy and needs comfort, but Mike has to be very careful not to hurt the kid who is still covered with bruises."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tanchouz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanchouz/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [В болезни и здравии](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10192964) by [tanchouz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanchouz/pseuds/tanchouz)



Jesse cringed as he sat on Mike’s couch. His arms and ribs were bruised. The people at the hospital had wrapped an ace bandage around his swollen right wrist. There was a cut on the back of his head that had required a few stitches. His lip was split. Most noticeably, his right eye was swollen shut. Pretty much every part of him hurt.

“You want aspirin?” Mike asked.

“Yeah.”

Mike brought him a couple aspirin and a water. He cracked open his beer and sat down next to the kid. 

When he clicked on the TV, the picture was a little grainy and colorized. The world “violation” looked like the title, but Mike knew better. 

“Good, it’s something old. Cool Hand Luke. You seen this?” Mike asked.

“Maybe part of it.”

“I think you’d like it. Have you ever heard that saying, ‘Nobody can eat fifty eggs’? That came from this movie.”

“What the fuck? That is not a saying I ever heard.”

“It’s a famous line.”

Jesse conceded, “Okay maybe it’s a famous line, but it’s not a saying.” Jesse laughed a little and winced. 

“You want some frozen peas to put on your eye?”

“Yeah. Please.”

Mike got up and rooted around in his freezer. He kept talking to Jesse all the while. “You know AMC used to actually play American Movie Classics instead of that original shit they put on at night now? It was great. They had war movies, detective movies, westerns.” Mike turned towards the living room. “You want a popsicle?”

On the screen, Luke was cutting the heads of parking meters until he fell down drunk. 

Jesse kept watching while he answered, “I don’t want to step on Kaylee’s toes. How many do you have?”

“I know how to go to the store and get more, Jesse. It’s not a problem.”

Mike handed Jesse a popsicle, and carefully set the plastic bag of peas over his black eye. Even with the worst of covered by the bag of peas, he still looked awful. 

They watched in silence. Eventually Jesse took Mike’s hand and they sat like that while things went from bad to worse for Cool Hand Luke.

During a commercial break Mike said, “I saw this movie in the theater on a date and afterwards when we were necking in the car, I kept thinking about Paul Newman’s abs. I went and saw it three more times.”

Jesse squeezed Mike’s hand. 

When the final credits rolled, Jesse had five popsicle sticks in front of him and a soggy bag of peas on his eye. 

Mike straightened everything up and asked, “Is there anything you want? I was gonna go get you more popsicles and some applesauce or something.”

Jesse seemed like he was going to say something, but didn’t. 

“What?” 

“No, I was going to say pistachio pudding, but they don’t make snack packs of it.”

“I can make pudding.”

While Mike was gone, Jesse went to the bathroom mirror and surveyed the damage. He looked even worse than he had at the hospital. Half his face was swollen and purple. The injured eye wouldn’t open, but kept releasing tears. He took a hand mirror and looked at the back of his head. There was a bald spot around the stitches. With the rest of his hair a couple inches long, it looked like he had mange. He set down the mirror. It was too depressing to take off his shirt and check out the rest of the harm.

He went back to the couch and watched more TV until Mike came home. 

Mike came in and set the grocery bags in the kitchen. He gave Jesse a little kiss on the forehead. Neither of them said anything. Mike put away the food and read the back of the pistachio pudding box. He measured out the milk and whisked it with the white powder that turned green on contact. He put it in the fridge to chill and came back in to the living room to kiss Jesse a second time. He gingerly ruffled the top of the kid’s hair. 

“Hey, will you cut my hair to even it out a little?” Jesse asked.

“Sure, after lunch.” 

Jesse ate all of the pudding while Mike had a ham sandwich and potato chips. 

Jesse sort of envied Mike’s beer. He considered asking Mike get him some Odoul’s the next time he went out, but it wasn’t the taste that he missed; it was the buzz. If he could have taken anything, he would have taken the major painkillers the doctor tried to give him, or maybe pot, probably the painkillers. 

“So you ready for a haircut?” Mike asked interrupting Jesse’s contemplation of drugs. 

Mike had him sit on a chair in the kitchen. He turned on the clippers and very slowly started to buzz the hair around the Jesse’s ear. Bits of hair fell onto Jesse’s shirt and the floor.

The hum of the clippers was numbing in a good way. It distracted from the pain. As Mike cautiously ran the clippers over the back of Jesse’s head, Jesse had the flash of daydream that he was a Marine like Mike used to be. 

Mike was especially careful around the wound. Jesse held still and Mike went slow. Mike was like that, and even more so now. He came around in front of Jesse and had him tilt his head back while he did the front. When Mike judged it to be even all around, he turned off the clippers and helped Jesse take off his shirt. 

“Let me run you a bath,” Mike offered. 

Jesse nodded. He accidentally trailed a little bit of hair into the bathroom. He took off the rest of his clothes and the bandage from his wrist. He sat in the empty tub while Mike turned on the tap to the perfect temperature. 

“Is that okay?”

“It’s good.”

Jesse splashed water on his face to get rid of stray hairs. He wasn’t supposed to get his stitches wet but he did anyway; or, Mike did with a clean, steaming washcloth. Mike dabbed at the wound tenderly. He rewetted the washcloth and wiped the loose hairs off Jesse’s head, then his shoulders. He washed Jesse’s back and arms. It made Jesse think of the phrase - in sickness and in health. 

Mike broke the spell. “My knees are killing me,” he said, as he started to get up.

Jesse stayed in the tub a long time. He listened to Mike sweep up and start a load of laundry. He listened to Mike walking around doing whatever he was doing. Jesse rested his head on the edge of the bathtub and listened to quietness until he dozed off. 

He woke up when Mike said gently, “Jesse, you’re going to get chilled in there.”

“Yeah, totally, I was just getting out.”

Mike held the towel for him but didn’t wrap him up in it. Jesse said, “I’m not so fragile, Mike. You can hold me.”

“Okay.”

Mike put his arms around him and enveloped him in the towel as carefully as he could. Jesse cautiously kissed Mike’s neck without hurting his split lip. Mike tightened the embrace slightly. 

The room was steamy and smelled like soap. Jesse kissed Mike very lightly on the lips. 

“Take it easy,” Mike whispered. 

“I am. I just missed you.”

Mike gave him a half smile. “I missed you too, kid. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m still sorry.” 

They went to bed. Jesse tried laying on his back, and then on his front, but the position that hurt the least was on his good side. Mike lay down behind him and put a hand on Jess’s hip which, oddly enough, felt fine since that particular spot of flesh hadn’t been beaten. Jesse snuggled back closer to Mike and Mike kept hold of him. Jesse shifted a little and tried to close his eye that could still open and shut. It was warm under the covers with Mike. He thought back to other times he’d recuperated from getting the shit kicked out of him. He’d been so alone then, and now he wasn’t. Now he had someone to look after him.


End file.
